Ping An Healthcare’s “Good Doctor” now has over 300 million users … the world’s leading online healthcare ecosystem platform

September 23, 2019

Whilst it started out as an insurance company, founded in 1990 and now completely publicly owned, PingAn has used this financial underpinning to support its growth into many other sectors. A little like Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, it has built on its financial powerhouse, but in its case by using new technology platform thinking. With a market value of over $200 billion, it is already one of the world’s top 10 largest companies.

Good Doctor is PingAn’s digital healthcare business, established in 2015, and now the world’s largest healthcare platform with 300 million users. It describes its service model as “internet + AI + physicians” which translates as an online app, through which a patient will initially evaluate their health or specific condition using an AI-enabled diagnostic. If required they will then be connected by video call, typically within an hour, to a real doctor, most likely one of 10,000 employed by PingAn sitting in its service hubs.

The doctor can then refer their patient for further diagnosis, treatment or medication. This is when the ecosystem of partners becomes invaluable with a nationwide network of clinicians, hospitals and pharmacies, and even a home delivery service for prescriptions. The platform also offers wellbeing advice for health and wellbeing, for example, supporting new mothers and elderly. A monthly-subscription embraces an insurance fee to cover some costs, whilst a premium service called Private Doctor offers additional services and all-inclusive fees.

Here is the company’s press release:

The world’s leading online healthcare ecosystem platform, Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company Limited (“Ping An Good Doctor“) announced today that the number of registered users on Ping An Good Doctor exceeded 300 million, implying that one in every three Chinese Internet users is a user of Ping An Good Doctor. With the development of online healthcare services in the past few years, people have developed a habit to seek medical care on the Internet. Since its founding five years ago, Ping An Good Doctor has successfully amassed 300 million registered users, which shows the vitality of Ping An Good Doctor and the whole online healthcare industry, and the driving force of the transformation of China’s medical and health service pattern.

Over recent years, residents’ awareness of health management is increasing. Meanwhile, the aging population also drives the continuous growth in demand for quality medical resources. To better meet the medical needs of people, the central and local governments continue to deepen and advance the “Internet + Healthcare” model, launch various policy, guidance and standard for online medical services, and incorporate online consultation and treatment into the social insurance system, thereby encouraging and supporting the development of online healthcare sector. In line with the national policy, Ping An Good Doctor has drastically reduced the restrictions in seeking healthcare services and offered effective support for the tiered consultation and treatment system so as to provide convenient health management services for users.

Becoming the prime choice of the 300 million users is a fitting testament to the premium quality of Ping An Good Doctor’s healthcare services. Pioneering the service model of “Internet + AI + 1000 in-house physicians”, Ping An Good Doctor cooperates with offline pharmacies and hospitals to provide users with 24/7 one-stop medical healthcare services, such as online consultation services, hospital referrals, appointments, inpatient arrangements, second medical opinions and one-hour medicine delivery, aiming to meet the diverse and personalised healthcare needs of users, offer genuine medical services and win the trust of users. As of the end of June 2019, the MAU (monthly active user) of Ping An Good Doctor reached 62.70 million, with the average daily consultation hitting 650,000 for the first half of 2019.

At the same time, by leveraging its mature capability in platform operation and AI medical technological competence, Ping An Good Doctor pioneered the cloud-based Internet hospitals, cloud-based Internet pharmacies, cloud-based Internet clinics and cloud-based Internet village doctors as well as the international “4 + 1” strategy, reducing the burden and increasing the efficiency of hospitals, empowering pharmacies to develop new retail business formats, enhancing the diagnostic efficiency for the grassroots in a holistic manner, undertaking social responsibilities, and building close collaborative ties with local governments to push ahead with the village doctor programme for the continuous improvement of the medical ecosystem.

On this basis, Ping An Good Doctor launched an innovative, strategic product Private Doctor of Ping An Good Doctor in August 2019, signing cooperation agreements with 29 global industry leaders for a total contractual amount of RMB300 million. With the service, users can enjoy one-to-one online consultation service provided by medical specialists, 24/7 medical service, and many other high-quality healthcare services together with an e-health profile and a customised healthcare management plan. The Private Doctor services of Ping An Good Doctor connects the two ends of medical services, like doctors and users, achieving full interaction and greater user loyalty, so that doctors can track the health status of users in the long term and build close relationship and trust with users. Capitalising on this new relationship, users can obtain more precise, consistent and personalized healthcare services.

While the country continues to promote healthcare infrastructure in China and encourage the development of online medical service and innovative family service model, Ping An Good Doctor is leading the industry and has become the first online medical platform with 300 million registered users. This will further reinforce the confidence and determination of its industrial partners in the course of their development and underpin the healthy development of China’s online medical industry.

About Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company Limited

As the world’s leading one-stop healthcare ecosystem platform, Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company Limited (“Ping An Good Doctor“; stock code: 01833.HK) is strive to provide every family with a family doctor, every person with an e-profile and everyone with a healthcare management plan through our “mobile medical + AI technology”. At present, Ping An Good Doctor has established key business segments including online medical services, consumer healthcare, healthcare mall, and health management and wellness interaction.

As of 30 June 2019, our number of registered users reached 289.3 million and the number of monthly active users reached 62.7 million, it has become the largest mobile medical application in China in terms of coverage. Being powered by self-developed AI-assisted diagnosis system, our in-house medical team is strive to provide users with one-stop medical services covering 7/24 online consultation, referral, registration, online drug purchase and one-hour medicine delivery.

In April 2015, the Company received US$400 million private placement from Softbank Vision Fund. On 4 May 2018, Ping An Good Doctor became the No.1 listed internet healthcare company in the world when it joined the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, stock code 01833.HK.